Obamacare

The FBI reportedly is probing the failed launch of Oregon's ObamaCare insurance exchange, joining several other agencies looking into the multimillion-dollar program that was scrapped last month.

The Oregonian and KATU first reported on the preliminary investigation. The law enforcement arm of the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general also is involved, according to The Oregonian.

The state exchange, called Cover Oregon, stood out as perhaps the worst-run of all the ObamaCare exchanges. The state decided last month to abandon the system and default to the federally run insurance exchange, on HealthCare.gov.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the FBI has interviewed several people as part of the inquiry. The Oregonian reported that the bureau held a 90-minute meeting with a former Republican lawmaker who detailed potential wrongdoing -- including suspicions that the state showed the feds a misleading demonstration to keep money flowing.

Planned Parenthood’s net revenue increased 5% to total of $1.21 billion in its organizational fiscal year ending on June 30, 2013, according to its new Annual Report 2012-2013, and about 45% of that revenue--$540.6 million--was provided by taxpayer-funded government health services grants.

In the same report, Planned Parenthood said that in the year that ended on Sept.

House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Thursday the House’s bill that would require the Obama administration to notify Americans within 48 hours if their identity is compromised via the ObamaCare website is a “no-brainer.”

Cantor, R-Va., said on The Kelly File that many Americans are “legitimately” concerned with information and identity theft when sharing personal information online.

“If there is any chance that one’s information and identity can be stolen or abused on the healthcare.gov website or in any way shape or form connected with the ObamaCare exchange then we should take the precautionary measures necessary,” Cantor said...

A new study says Americans 18 to 34 may come off better by paying the penalty under Obamacare instead of getting on exchanges.

But will those young Americans do so?

The penalty for 2014 is either $95 or one percent of your income, whichever is greater.

When you factor in the premium costs plus the penalty, Dr. David Hogberg of the National Center for Public Policy Research says millions of single and childless Americans 18 to 34 will have an incentive to merely pay the fine and move on.

Still, when you consider that many Americans 18 to 29 supported President Obama in the last two elections, will they pay the fine...?

Two religious-affiliated colleges claimed a "major victory" Tuesday after a federal appeals court ordered the Obama administration to verify that it is revising the so-called contraception mandate in ObamaCare.

The decision out of the D.C. Court of Appeals effectively reinstated a challenge that had been dismissed by lower courts. Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College were arguing against the federal health care overhaul rule that requires employers to provide access to contraceptive care.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has represented several plaintiffs challenging the rule, hailed the court decision.

"The D.C. Circuit has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom," Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund, said in a statement. "The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road"...

A federal appeals court issued an injunction on Wednesday that temporarily blocks President Barack Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services from implementing Obamacare’s contraception mandate.

The mandate requires employers to provide their employees with health care plans that include coverage for contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

Missouri business owner Frank O’Brien, who employs 87 people at O’Brien Industrial Holdings, alleged in the lawsuit that led to the injunction that the mandate unconstitutionally infringes on his religious beliefs...

Democrats at the 2012 Democratic National Convention are set to approve a platform today that is unambiguously pro-abortion and opposes any effort whatsoever to stop any abortions. The platform also calls on forcing Americans to pay for abortions at taxpayer expense.

The platform Democrats will approve rejects efforts to stop forcing taxpayers to fund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business and supports the Obama HHS mandate that forces religious groups to pay for and refer women for abortion-causing drugs under Obamacare.

Democrats also support Roe v. Wade and its 40-year legacy of 55 million abortions, and President Obama’s decision to strike the Mexico City Policy, which President George W. Bush put in place to protect taxpayers from having to fund groups that promote or perform abortions overseas. Unlike the Republican platform, Democrats say nothing about China’s one-child policy that includes forced abortions...

House lawmakers voted Wednesday to repeal the federal health care overhaul -- the latest in a long line of anti-"ObamaCare" votes, but the first since the Supreme Court upheld the law and defined one of its key provisions as a "tax."

The House has voted more than 30 times to scrap, defund or undercut the law since Obama signed it in March 2010. As with those bills, the repeal bill approved Wednesday on a 244-185 vote faces certain demise in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

But Republicans were looking to get lawmakers back on record on the law in the wake of the high court ruling last month. The ruling upheld most the law as constitutional, but in doing so determined that the controversial penalty on those who do not buy insurance technically qualifies as a "tax" and not a "penalty" as the administration had claimed. That definition fueled GOP criticism of the law, and put some Democrats in a politically tricky position...

The Supreme Court may have ruled on Obamacare, but a pro-life law firm that is behind some of the many lawsuits that have been filed against the HHS mandate that requires religious groups to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs say those challenges continue.

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision essentially upholding the Obamacare law that pro-life groups regard as the biggest expansion of abortion and abortion funding since Roe v. Wade. The law also drew strong opposition from the pro-life community not only over abortion but because the legislation also promotes rationing of medical care that could lead to involuntarily denying lifesaving treatment.

Under the enacted law, federal tax-based subsidies will begin in 2014 to subsidize millions of private insurance plans that will cover abortion-on-demand, including some plans (“multi-state plans”) that will be administered by the federal government.

The Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling on Thursday cuts right to the very fabric of the relationship between a once-limited government and a once-free citizen, but the eternal struggle between liberty and tyranny endures. It is a beginning, not an end.

As enormously important as the high court’s Obamacare ruling is - and it’s huge - it’s not the final word. The legal and political dust has not yet settled, and it will take some time for the unpredictable ripples to form the powerful waves of history. Yet, history waits for no man, so we begin by asking: What now?

First, we mourn. We mourn that a nation built on the principle of limited government has grown the largest government in the history of humankind. We mourn that our Supreme Court rewrote Obamacare into Obamatax to allow for the individual mandate. We mourn that once again we read the lips of a president who promised he would not raise our taxes but did so anyway.